


what he started

by kira_katrine



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27925708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: Seven of Nine had known the director of the Borg Reclamation Project. There had been things they could tell each other that they couldn't tell anyone else.Not everything, though.
Relationships: Hugh | Third of Five & Seven of Nine
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27
Collections: Star Trek Holidays 2020





	what he started

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/gifts).



Seven of Nine knew the director of the Reclamation Project, had been put in contact with him years after Voyager’s return from the Delta Quadrant. He hadn’t been the director of anything at the time. He had just been someone else who was like her--the only one really like her, with the exception of Icheb, who by then was already off at Starfleet Academy doing everything he could to be a model officer and citizen. The only ones who’d spent years, nearly all their lives with the Borg and come out of it as--

_ \--what? _ Seven had yet to stop asking that question. They had kept in touch ever since, even as their paths diverged widely. 

“Admiral Janeway still believes I will join Starfleet one day,” Seven said. She remembered the look in her former captain’s eyes as she’d spoken of the possibility. As she’d presumably imagined Seven in a cadet’s uniform, staring in wonder up at the towers of Starfleet Academy, or perhaps standing on the bridge of a starship, hands on hips like Janeway herself.

“Does she,” Hugh said mildly. This was not the first time they had discussed this. If anything, Seven had only become more certain over the years that she would do no such thing.

“Naomi has nearly completed her own application to the Academy,” said Seven. 

“How does it look?”

“Janeway believes it to be more than satisfactory,” Seven said. “I am not the person to ask. But it took Naomi several attempts to reach that assessment from her. Therefore, I suspect her judgement is likely accurate.”

“But her judgement of you is not.”

“No,” Seven said. “I no longer believe it to be.”

There had been times when they had fallen out of contact. When Seven had been with Bjayzl, she had begun to feel things she had never experienced before--or at least, never fully let herself experience. Good feelings, she admitted to herself. Feelings like stars burning inside her. Like she would go with this woman anywhere, if only she would touch her again.

Bjayzl had made Seven want to be human. To experience all it had to offer.

(And perhaps she especially wanted that when Bjayzl’s eye lingered a little too long at one of her implants, when the touches Seven had realized she wanted became a bit too much of a fascination with those places on her in particular.)

And then, Bjayzl had ripped Seven’s world apart, ripped  _ them _ apart, destroyed all those new feelings she had awakened in Seven and replaced them with something more known to her. Emptiness. And in time, other feelings had come in to replace it--

_ Grief. Rage. Hate. _

And yet Hugh had still been there, when Seven had been ready to return, unsure as she was that she still deserved his friendship. She wasn’t sure he’d quite understood, but if he hadn’t, he hadn’t seemed to need to.

Seven had never mentioned him to Bjayzl. Somehow, it had felt wrong. Like they were two different parts of her life that should never intersect. Considering everything--never able to forget the sight of the gaping wounds where Icheb’s implants had been ripped from his body, the blood that had soaked his Starfleet uniform, had come away on Seven’s hands as she’d held him for the last time--she was glad she hadn’t.

These days, there was a lot Hugh could not tell her. The Romulans insisted on secrecy in many things, yes, but more than that--he wanted to protect the ex-Borg on the Artifact’s privacy. No one else saw them as having anything much worth protecting.

There were things Seven couldn’t tell Hugh, either. Even the locations of many of her transmissions had to be disguised. She didn’t want to put him in the position of knowing more about the Rangers than he should, even if she knew he’d never betray her of his own volition.

But at the same time, there were things they could tell each other that they could tell no one else. 

“Even when they’re trying to help,” Hugh said, “it’s as if they can only see the former Borg as pathetic tragedies. Perhaps deserving of pity, but nothing more. As if they can’t see me at all--or worse, they can. I wish there was some way to get through to them.”

“We shouldn’t need them,” Seven said.

“I wish I didn’t,” Hugh said, “but they provide me with the resources I need to do this work.”

“They are not convincing me of their usefulness. There are other ways--”

“No,” he said firmly. “My place is here.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“I have to be here for the xBs, Seven,” Hugh said. She knew he did not entirely understand her choice to still go by her Borg designation after all these years, but he respected it, always called her what she wanted to be called. “They’re stuck here no matter what I do. They need someone. And I have to stay strong for them.”

“You are strong,” Seven said. “You are one of the strongest people I know.”

“Thank you,” Hugh said, but he still seemed troubled.

She had never visited him on the Artifact. He had made it clear she was welcome, but she knew he understood why she couldn’t. It wasn’t because she couldn’t face being on a cube again--it was far too late for that, considering everything she had experienced when she had been with Voyager. No, it was something else entirely. 

Or perhaps not entirely. Life on the Artifact was very structured, all in service of interests beyond any of their own--any of the former Borg, even those living there. Just like Starfleet. Just like everything she had wanted to get away from. And to see those former Borg living in the way Hugh had described to her--

She would not have been able to stand it, in his position. And she did not know how she might find herself reacting, but suspected it would not turn out well for the Romulans’ or the Federation’s opinion of him, if people were to be judged by their associates. 

She did not know in which of them that was a defect, but she had her suspicions. And she didn’t like them.

* * *

Seven had known the director of the Reclamation Project.  _ Had known. _

She had stood on the Artifact for the first time. She hadn’t known yet why she had been summoned there, but she could tell something was terribly wrong.

Everything looked familiar to her, of course, even though she had never set foot on this particular cube--the narrow corridors, lit with that greenish light; the feeling, even as one who was no longer linked to the collective, that they were present, that she was surrounded. That her every move, even her thoughts were being watched.

Elnor hadn’t had to tell her what had happened. She had seen it all on his face. Though, of course, he had explained everything to her immediately.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Elnor had said, face pressed into Seven’s shoulder, as she stood, frozen, trying desperately to process the thoughts that were racing through her own mind. “He was supposed to be out of the way--but she--”

“It’s all right,” Seven said. “You did nothing wrong. What were you attempting to do?”

“He wanted to take the cube back,” Elnor said. “Back from the Romulans. For the ex-Borg.”

_ Perhaps he might have understood what I was feeling better than I thought, _ Seven realized. “We must finish what he and you started.”

Elnor lifted his head, stared at Seven, eyes wide. “Do you have a plan?”

She didn’t, hardly having had time to fully assess the situation herself--but she did have some idea.

She didn’t want to give herself too much time to consider what she was about to do. She couldn’t. If she did, she would think better of it. She already had.

She would be doing to them the same thing that had been done to her, to Hugh and Icheb and far too many others--and worse, they might not realize it, just what it was she would have done. 

And she could lose herself--but perhaps not the way one might expect. The Borg Queen always maintained a certain degree of individuality. If Seven did this, it would be quite different from being assimilated again herself. She would keep her own mind, or at least some part of it, separate from the collective.

She would gain something she had never truly felt she had, not ever in her life--

_ \--control. _

They would become part of her, every one from those still full drones to those whose de-assimilation had been nearly completed. And who she was, whoever she was, would join with them too. The destructive influence she had become.

She would have to be able to control herself, first. She should be able to do that. She had spent so long distant from emotion, distant from herself. She should be able to return, she thought, as the links to the queencell latched onto her, found their place as if they knew to seek her out--

And then it slammed into her, an oncoming tidal wave of sound and screams and absolute terror that wiped out her preparations, her thoughts,  _ everything _ .

She wished she could force everyone to hear it. Federation, Romulan, it didn’t matter, what was even the difference, they should all have to hear it, this never-ending screaming in the horror of their own existence, something none of them could possibly comprehend, not unless they had lived it--

She now had the power to make them hear it, if she wanted to.

The Federation, Starfleet, the Romulans, the Fenris Rangers--all were but specks. Foolish humanoids, pointlessly working towards individual objectives none of them could ever reach. Petty conflicts that meant nothing, that only took and only destroyed. Everything any of them had ever done--useless. Lost to chaos, to endless suffering and destruction.

_ I can stop it. I can create order. I am here. _

The screaming died down. Calm began to set in. Order. As if they knew--

_ We are Borg. _

_ We are Borg. _

_ We are-- _

It ripped through Seven, an endless all-consuming void greater than any she had felt since she herself had been ripped away from the collective, and they were all screaming,  _ we were screaming _ , Seven was--

_ \--they were gone, so many of them were gone, what had she done-- _

_ \--there should never have been hope, not for any of us-- _

_ \--a cause more lost-- _

_ \--certainly not for me-- _

_ \--Hugh-- _

_ \--everything he worked for-- _

_ It wasn’t her memory--it couldn’t have been, she had never seen him here--and yet it was hers, she could see it as though she herself had lived it-- _

_ \--she saw him, standing before her in the examination room, an expression on his face she could not comprehend-- _

_ \--no, she, Seven, could comprehend it, she knew it-- _

_ \--he cared-- _

_ But he is gone. _ The thought reverberated through the collective like a wave.  _ I am here. We are here. _

_ Annika is here, Annika Hansen, human, with all the emotion she thought she was above for so long, all the rage she couldn’t control, all the need she never understood-- _

_ \--and we are certainly no better off for it all. _

_ They all must pay,  _ she thought to all of hers, who would no longer be hers. _ But no more at your hand. You must have a chance--whatever tiny, impossible chance he saw. _

Perhaps she was just as lost, just as useless alone as any of them.

But maybe, she thought as she came back to her surroundings, as she took in the sight of Elnor, eyes wide, as if he wasn't sure it would be her that came back--she didn’t have to be.

Not always. Not now.


End file.
